I'd be the first to tell you that I'm not a particularly poetic person. I understand that it's sort of the painting or drawing of words, and intended to evoke certain emotions or pictures in peoples' minds when they read it, but I personally just find it slightly superfluous. If I'm going to be inspired by a miraculous snow storm with snowflakes falling in perfect form and sticking to the grass like a fresh coat of fairy dust, I'm gonna want to see it with my own eyes first.
That being said, as a student who has written poetry for classes over the years, I'm perfectly aware that a good poem has to come from some inspiration of its own. That's really where I'm trying to go with this blog post: Inspiration. What inspires us to express ourselves?
Recently, whenever I've felt like expressing myself through any material method, I've written letters to some of my friends in college. There's something nice about getting a letter via snail mail...even if it takes over a week to get a response. I write to them because I miss them, or I'm remembering some good, bad, or crazy time we lived through together. So I guess, because of that, I've sort of started to associate inspiration with memory.
I feel like that's a pretty normal inspiration. But it's just interesting to see how it developed. A year ago if someone asked me what inspired me to do anything at all, I probably would have spit out some preformed line about how working towards that single spotlight on a Broadway stage gave me all the inspiration I ever needed. Who says melodrama is a bad thing?
They say what inspires us is what we hold the closest to our hearts. What do you think?
I definitely agree with you. As human beings, we come to care about certain things and certain people more than others. Love is a powerful emotion, and like all emotions, it has its groundings in biological functionality. If the majority of parents did not naturally love their children, the success of our species would not have been assured. Likewise, completing tasks that are associated with things that we love are much easier to complete and are usually much more successfully completed. People spend their lives working, so it is extremely important for a person to get satisfaction and a feeling of self-worth from their job. It is almost never about the money, I am convinced. It is truly about the love. My mother always told me to "do what you love and the money will follow." I think that was the best piece of advice she ever gave me, and while completion of this goal is not possible 100% of the time, it is possible a certain percentage of the time. It is always a worthwhile aim for that reason. Inspiration is essential to any important endeavor you embark on, and without love, inspiration cannot happen.
ReplyDeleteP.S. It sounds like you have not been exposed to really good poetry thus far.